The collection consists of personal items, correspondence and manuscripts produced and acquired in the course of Hermann M. Selzers life

The personal items include birth certificates (translations and copies), passports, visas, school and university records of Kate and Hermann Selzer (Universities of Cologne and Berlin, Medical Academy of Duesseldorf); Awards of the Federal Republic of Germany (Bundesverdienstkreuz) and the Salvation Army; various documents recording Hermann Selzers occupations, especially his membership and grades in masonry lodges, but also German insurance forms, documents on bank deposits, his wifes cookbook. Also included documents and correspondence of Hermann Selzer with German authorities, concerning his efforts to regain the German citizenship

The bulk of the collection consists of typewritten manuscripts of essays (the most of them being nonfictional, but also fictional), containing reflections about Lahore/Pakistan where Hermann Selzer spent his professional life from 1937 to 1971, reflections on his life course, ranging from his childhood and young adult years in Europe trough his professional life in Pakistan to his settlement and retirement in Israel; on religion (mainly Jewry, but also Christianity and Indian religions), on freemasonry, on the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Israeli society, on Swiss banks; on his family and friends in Israel, the U.S. and elsewhere. They include a detailed and coherent account on his life course, his parents and grandparents, photos of his own family members and friends

Correspondence contains both letters to and from family members, mainly in the U.S. (1941 1981), letters from patients at the Lahore surgery (1952-70), and letters to and from different authorities in Germany and Israel

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Hermann Marcus Selzer was born in Stryj (then Poland; now Stryi, Ukraine), in 1909 as the second of four children of Moshe Selzer and Deborah (née Spiegel). His father, an orthodox Jew, struggled to support the growing family. In 1914, the family moved to Oberhausen, an industrial town in the Ruhr valley. After finishing high school, Hermann enrolled at the medical school of the university of Cologne. In 1931, upon completion of his preparatory courses, he transferred to the medical academy in Duesseldorf to begin his clinical training. Shortly before his final exams in 1933, he was arrested and incarcerated by the Nazis. Upon his release, Hermann Selzer left for Italy where he met Kate, a former girlfriend, and married her in 1934. Both completed their internships in Rome. As the situation of foreign Jews in Italy began to deteriorate, the couple decided to immigrate to India, then still under the British rule

After brief stays in Palestine and Bombay, Kate and Hermann Selzer settled in Lahore, Pakistan, at that time an underdeveloped, small town, where their first child Hazel, also known as "Pipsi", was born. They opened a medical practice and soon established contacts among the English-speaking and high ranking civil servants. However in December 1940, the family was taken to an internment camp in Southern India as enemy aliens until June 1946, when they were able to return to Lahore. Their practice once again prospered thanks to their connections with leaders in politics, government, and the nobility. In addition, Hermann Selzer was an active freemason and he was appointed the District Grand Master of the Pakistan Masonic lodge

In 1971, Hermann Selzer decided to retire in Israel and the family left Lahore. For the next ten years, he worked part-time in various clinics of the student health service. Kate, his wife, suffered from Alzheimer's disease and died in 1986. Hermann Selzer died on November 25, 2007, in Jerusalem

In the course of his life, Hermann Marcus Selzer has been a citizen of Poland, Germany, Pakistan and Israel, and, for five years, a person without citizenship. Although Yiddish and German were his native languages, he became more or less fluent in Italian, English, Urdu and Hebrew

Finding aid available online

see also: Selzer, Hermann Marcus, 1909 -: Staubkorn im Sandsturm (MS 509)

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